People Call Me The Monster
by Menthol Pixie
Summary: Sometimes, when Sam can't sleep, he googles Stockholm Syndrome and wonders if it's that or whether Lucifer was just right, that they're two halves of a whole, made for each other, only complete when they're together.


**People Call Me The Monster**

 _Summary: Sometimes, when Sam can't sleep, he googles Stockholm Syndrome and wonders if it's that or whether Lucifer was just_ right _, that they're two halves of a whole, made for each other, only complete when they're together._

 _A/N and Warnings: So this is apparently what happens when I spend too long being bothered by how not bothered show-Sam was by the devil staying in his bedroom. References to torture and rape, psychological trauma, swearing, and some really messed up thinking from Sam._

XXX

The thing that Sam has never told Dean is this. He's not lying when he says that Lucifer terrifies him, repulses him, horrifies him. He's not lying when he says he hates him, but the thing he's never told Dean is, as much truth as there is to all of this, the opposite is true as well. Sam loves the devil.

Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he googles Stockholm Syndrome and wonders if it's that or whether Lucifer was just _right_ , that they're two halves of a whole, made for each other, only complete when they're together. He lies in bed and traces his fingers over invisible lines he remembers Lucifer carving delicately into his skin in the Cage. He thinks he remembers what it felt like, in that first moment after saying yes. He thought it would be agony but instead it was euphoria. It was like coming home, like a part of him he hadn't even realised was missing had returned and everything was right now that they were together. He thinks he remembers but maybe those were just Lucifer's feelings and he can't tell the difference anymore. Maybe he couldn't tell them apart in the first place, or maybe they're just not that different.

Sometimes, when he can't sleep, especially when he was still crazy enough and Dean scared enough to let him get away with it, he crawls into bed with his brother, shaking from the weight of too many years of memories, and Dean thinks it's because he's having nightmares. Sometimes he is but sometimes the nightmare is waking up and remembering that Lucifer is gone. Sometimes he's thinking about how Lucifer never left him, how he was never alone for almost two hundred years, for what was meant to be eternity, and how, even right beside his brother, he feels miserably lonely. Dean isn't Lucifer and Sam misses the devil.

The truth is that he wasn't supposed to come back. To spend so long in the Cage and then wake up in a world where barely a year has passed, to people he had long since given up hope of ever seeing again... it was amazing and horrifying all at once, jarring, daunting, disorientating. He remembers missing Dean in the Cage but somewhere along the line that had lost some of it's meaning and he'd had to relearn how to be Sam upon his return. Even years after the Cage, Dean sometimes still manages to surprise him with old, familiar, half-forgotten habits or sayings. The truth is that Sam almost forgot about other people while he was in the Cage. In the Cage he only had Lucifer.

The truth is, it wasn't always torture and sometimes even when it was Lucifer would weep, for himself, for Sam, for all the lost potential they had together. Sometimes Lucifer was heartbroken and Sam felt guilty for causing it by messing up the grand plans. Sometimes Lucifer would hold him and kiss his wounds back together and hum the songs that Dean used to sing and Sam would let himself be held and sung to and comforted and everything would feel like it was exactly where it was supposed to be. Sam was always meant for Lucifer.

Sometimes the devil raged; tore Sam to violent pieces, ripped off bloody chunks, burnt out eyes, squeezed and hacked with reckless abandon. Sometimes he was cold, methodical, carving works of art into the canvas of Sam's body, plucking nerves like guitar strings to hear all the different ways he could make Sam scream. Sometimes he fucked Sam like he owned him and sometimes he made love to Sam like he adored him. Sometimes he was gentle and sometimes Sam misses the hands in his hair and the devil's icy breath against his neck.

He doesn't tell Dean that sometimes they would talk for hours, days, months. That Lucifer would hold him close and tell him stories about Heaven and angels, God and the days before mankind, things that happened and people who lived so long ago that even their bones will have crumbled to dust by now. Lucifer spends nearly a decade ranting about God's love for humanity while he peels skin from Sam's limbs and drives hooks through Sam's chest, boils flesh, muscle, fat, sizzles blood, shatters and snaps bones and drags out entrails for Sam to see, and at the end of it he kisses Sam tenderly and tells him, "You're the only one worthy of my love."

The truth is that no one has ever loved Sam the way Lucifer does; completely, eternally, hungrily. No one else has seen the darkness in him and stayed not just in spite of it but because of it, because it's a part of him and every part is perfect. Lucifer tells Sam that he is everything he ever wanted, that's why he's so sad that he has to punish him. They could have been _great_ together, if only Sam hadn't ruined it by saving the world. They could have _been_ together, like they were always supposed to be.

Because the truth is, the real hell is being apart. The real hell didn't start when they fell into the Cage, it started when Castiel arrived to pull Sam out and fought so hard to save him while Sam fought so hard to stay that it tore him in half and left Lucifer bereft of the vessel that was made for him. Lucifer raged and screamed and ripped into the soul left behind with renewed anguish, and Sam understood his pain.

The truth is, when the visions start, so many years later, Sam is almost as elated as he is terrified. When he tells Dean he's scared to go back to the Cage he leaves out the part where he's scared he'll want to stay there. When Dean says there's no fucking way Sam is going back Sam is relieved and disappointed at the same time. He wants to fight Dean and hide behind him at the same time. He remembers blood and pain and tenderness and affection and sometimes he thinks that Lucifer was right all along, that love is all those things at the same time.

The truth is that the Cage is more familiar than the Impala. Lucifer's face is more deeply ingrained in his memory than Dean's. Going back there, even to a tiny part of it, feels more like coming home than returning to the bunker hunt after wearying hunt ever has. If Sam told Dean this, his brother would have never let him go. If Sam believed that his feelings mattered, he would never let himself go. Because Sam loves Lucifer but Lucifer is a liar and he'll do anything to get out of that Cage and wreak havoc on humanity or to get Sam in it and wreak more havoc on his soul. So when Lucifer – bright, terrible, beautiful Lucifer – asks for his permission, Sam channels his inner Dean and tells the devil to go fuck himself.

And when the remnants of Rowena's spell burn away, Lucifer is gone and Sam feels hollow, diminished, like Lucifer left with another part of him. Like Lucifer is the part of him that left.

Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he reminds himself that this is fucked up, that he's fucked up. He probably needs two hundred years worth of therapy. He shouldn't love his torturer, or feel sorry for him, or relate to him in any way. He shouldn't want to go back to the Cage just to be with him. It's probably not love, just something twisted that Lucifer wove into him over time, some warped co-dependency even worse than what he has with Dean. Lucifer doesn't know how to love.

Leaving him still feels like a betrayal.

Because the truth is that Sam was made for Lucifer, and the world is ending, and the God Sam used to pray to barely cares, and the devil is in the details of another angel's vessel. It's not Detroit but they were still always supposed to end up here.

Sam can't sleep with the Darkness hanging over his head so he lets himself pretend he's looking for Dean, a drink, Chuck, and wanders the bunker's halls until he finds himself exactly where he knew he would, outside the room Lucifer has claimed (Sam's room but Sam is Lucifer's so it was always his room anyway), staring at the closed door. He raises his hand to knock. Stops. Steps back and then forward again and has just decided to leave when the door opens.

Lucifer is beautiful no matter who he's wearing and the smile that spreads across Castiel's face makes Sam's heart thump with _terrorlonginghateneed_. This is a mistake. He can't breathe. He should run but he doesn't want to, wants to but everywhere he goes seems to lead him back to the devil anyway.

"Sam," Lucifer says, holding out his hand. "I knew you'd come."

 **END**


End file.
